An Efficient Method for Constructing Underwater Sensor Barriers

Anti-submarine warfare(ASW) is a critical challenge for maintaining a fleet presence in hostile areas. Technology advancement has allowed submarines to evade standard sonar detection. A viable alternative is to place magnetic or acoustic sensors in close proximity to possible underwater pathways of submarines. This approach may require deploying large-scale underwater sensor networks to form 3-dimensional barriers. We present new results on sensor barriers for 3-dimensional sensor networks. We first show that when sensor locations follow a Poisson Point Process then sensor barriers in a large 3dimensional fixed emplacement sensor field are unlikely to exist. We use the notion of 3-dimensional stealth distance to measure how far a submarine can travel in a sensor network without being detected. We devise an energy-conserving scheme to construct 3dimensional barriers using mobile sensors. We focus on developing an energy efficient matching of mobile sensors to cover grid points using distributed auction algorithms. Specifically, we try to minimize the maximum travel distance between any sensor and its assigned grid point. Through simulation we show in comparison to the optimal solution, the distributed auction based approach offers reduced computation time and similar maximum travel distance. This provides a promising new approach to constructing barriers in 3-dimensional sensor networks.